This blog will post detailed news items about GLBT issues. Some of the issues include the "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and gay marriage. Please note that my main website is DOASKDOTELL.COM (link on my Profile).

Followers

About Me

Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

A few websites have more details on the Tyler Clementi tragedy

The Website gawker has an interesting story giving more details about a series of postings on a site called “Just us boys” by a mysterious user with id “cit2mo”, which appear to match the details of the forced outing of Tyler by the privacy-invading webcam in his dorm room. The gawker link is here, and the JUB link is this. The gawker link asks if this was TC's "last call for help", and JUB refers to "roommate spying." There is a provocative picture on gawker and reference to “cam4.com” which Webroot/Spysweeper advises me not to surf (and it did find a couple spy cookies to quarantine after the warning).

The analysis on the gawker piece is comprehensive, but a few other questions remains. They are sensitive. What was Tyler’s own belief system, and that of his family? Who were the partners in the room, and would the outing be significant because of that? Did Rutgers have any particular policy regarding having visitors in dorms for intimate purposes? (When I went to college in the 1960s, it would never have been allowed, but of course things are different today.) Most web sites talk about shame and homophobia and make “the usual arguments”; a few go into legal analysis of culpability of the current defendants. A few (like Huffington) do go into the dangers of the Internet and cyberbullying.

The “cit2mo” posts tend to show an attempt to get some sort of solution and even justice from the university, and that somehow his expectation for that had failed; he appears not to have had a lot of confidence that the University would ultimately be able to handle this kind of problem fairly. Reading between the lines, one could suppose a sense of a lack of respect from others for his autonomy, not only from his roommate but others in the dorm environment. This is a difficult matter, but we know from all kinds of problems around the world (I don’t won’t to be too specific) that shame (or the feeling that others will not respect you regardless of the legal or overriding moral system supposedly in place, and that in practice there are intolerable “double standards”) can be a most unacceptable emotion, and that sometimes one’s own end is the only way to force others to deal with the harm they have done. Here, one can only go into some of the basic ideas of Christian faith particularly: that forgiveness is an important component of freedom, because society can never be perfectly fair or just by human standards, but must be a work in progress. Christianity (the concept of Grace) seems to do more with this problem than either Judaism or Islam, but that’s only my own personal perspective.

I did have roommate issues my first (and lost) semester at William and Mary in the fall of 1961, with very different outcome, which would set the course of my life; the details of that are on the "BillBoushka" blog Nov. 28, 2006.

Picture: from the Navy Memorial, where a two films dealing with “don’t ask don’t tell” were shown Friday Oct 22 (see my movies blog that day). Repealing DADT would help with the bullying problem. The picture rather calls to mind Benjamin Britten's opera "Billy Budd" which would anticipate today's debate on DADT.

Update: Nov. 1: Lawyers for the Rutgers defendants are saying that Clementi's encounter was seen only on a single computer, not broadcast (Today show). Not sure what sense this makes yet.

(Use for analytics)

Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy for billonglbt.blogspot.com

If you require any more information or have any questions about my privacy policy, please feel free to contact me by email at JBoushka@aol.com.

At billonglbt.blogspot.com , the privacy of my visitors is of extreme importance to me. This privacy policy document outlines the types of personal information is received and collected by billonglbt.blogspot.com and how it is used.

Log Files Like many other Web sites, billonglbt.blogspot.com makes use of log files. The information inside the log files includes internet protocol ( IP ) addresses, type of browser, Internet Service Provider ( ISP ), date/time stamp, referring/exit pages, and number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track user’s movement around the site, and gather demographic information. IP addresses, and other such information are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable.

Cookies and Web Beacons billonglbt.blogspot.com does not use cookies.

DoubleClick DART Cookie

.:: Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on billonglbt.blogspot.com .
.:: Google's use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to your users based on their visit to billonglbt.blogspot.com and other sites on the Internet.
.:: Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy at the following link.

Some of my advertising partners may use cookies and web beacons on my site. My advertising partners include ....... Google Adsense

These third-party ad servers or ad networks use technology to the advertisements and links that appear on billonglbt.blogspot.com send directly to your browsers. They automatically receive your IP address when this occurs. Other technologies ( such as cookies, JavaScript, or Web Beacons ) may also be used by the third-party ad networks to measure the effectiveness of their advertisements and / or to personalize the advertising content that you see.

billonglbt.blogspot.com has no access to or control over these cookies that are used by third-party advertisers.

You should consult the respective privacy policies of these third-party ad servers for more detailed information on their practices as well as for instructions about how to opt-out of certain practices. billonglbt.blogspot.com 's privacy policy does not apply to, and we cannot control the activities of, such other advertisers or web sites.

If you wish to disable cookies, you may do so through your individual browser options. More detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers can be found at the browsers' respective websites.